The Stellar Development Foundation has decided to disarm its validators and postpone the Protocol 20 upgrade scheduled for January 30, 2024, following ecosystem concerns about a discovered bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0 affecting fee bumps for Soroban transactions.
On January 25, 2024, the SDF discovered a bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0 that could impact applications using fee bumps for Soroban transactions during the Protocol 20 upgrade. While the SDF initially assessed the bug as low-risk given the phased rollout plan, robust feedback from contract developers, wallet developers, validators, and tools builders prompted a change in approach. The SDF has decided to disarm its validators to prevent them from voting for the upgrade on January 30. Other validators retain the freedom to vote independently, and if quorum is not achieved, the network will continue running Protocol 19. The SDF will work to resolve the bug, with a fixed version of Stellar Core expected within two weeks, after which a new upgrade vote date will be coordinated.
